This is one of those posts there are already plenty of on the net. There’s nothing new here. However, part of my process in understanding anything new is to re-explain what I (think) I have learnt to someone new. That’s you (sorry).

There are many times in JavaScript when you want to do something with an array of ‘stuff’.

Perhaps you want to create a subset of the array elements. Perhaps you want to create something else with each of the elements. Historically, I have always used a ‘for loop’ for this purpose.

Consider a simple array:

var main = [

Using a ‘for loop’ to console.log each one out would look like this:

for (var i=0; i < main.length; i++) {

Even if, like me, you write very little JavaScript, that loop should be easy enough to grasp conceptually, even if writing the syntax isn’t second nature to you. We create a variable and set it to zero and increment it once each time as we count up to the total number of items in the array. We use the i as the marker to reach inside the main array and console.log each item.

I like using `let` in place of `var` in these loops these days but it’s not as well supported so we’ll stick with var here.

Using a for loop like this is probably the most widely understood and taught way of using the elements in an array. However, I’ve recently started playing about with the native Array methods of JavaScript, heavily inspired by ‘FunFunFunction’ on YouTube: Mattias Petter Johansson has a whole series on Functional JavaScript that includes using these methods and I really appreciate the fun and energetic manner in which he delivers it. Highly recommended.


The first native Array method I want to explain the use of is forEach. We’ll start here as its name is very descriptive. It lets you do something for each element in the array. This is what it looks like:

main.forEach(function(item) {
   console.log(item); // logs each item

You could also just pass another function to forEach if you wanted to abstract the functionality you are applying to each element in the array. If we made a simple logging function we could use it like this:


function logger(item) {

The function that is called each time is auto-magically passed the element reference each time (and the iteration count if needed) so there is no need to pass anything as an argument to the logger function from the forEach method.


The filter method lets you create a new, filtered version of an existing array. Let’s look at a simple use case.

Suppose we take our example array from before:

var main = [

And we want to filter that array down to only include elements that match another array. Our other array looks like this:

var firstPattern = [0,2,4,5,6];

Like, forEach if we pass filter a function it auto-magically sends the item and iteration count to that function. So, let’s use a function for each element in the original array like this:

var matchPattern = main.filter(itemMatchesPattern);

We are creating a new array called matchPattern that will include elements from the main array that match our criteria.

We will define the criteria as a new function that returns a true/false result based on whether the count number of each item in the main array (remember we are iterating through each item in this array) exists in our new firstPattern array. If it does exist it will be included in the matchPattern array. That’s harder to explain than it is to write. It looks like this:

function itemMatchesPattern(item, count) {
    return firstPattern.includes(count);

You can see here that itemMatchesPattern takes two arguments, the element itself (item) and the iteration count (count). It then returns true or false for whether that count number exists in the firstPattern array. The filter we have applied to the main array only includes items that return true so the matchPattern array we are making only includes these ‘true’ elements. Logging out matchPattern therefore gives us this:

[ 'one', 'three', 'five', 'six', 'seven' ]

Nice. However, that itemMatchesPattern function isn’t very flexible. What if we wanted to match against another pattern?

Something like this:

var secondPattern = [1,3,4,7];

This had me stumped at first. I couldn’t figure out how to pass a different array to the itemMatchesPattern function to check against. Thank goodness for Stack Overflow!

So, we can amend our function to this:

function itemMatchesPattern(arrayName) {
    return function (item, count) {
        return arrayName.includes(count);

The function returns another function (which in turn does what it did before). However because the nested function has access to the outer scope it can now make use of the arrayName that’s being passed in when it is invoked. So, this is how it is now invoked:

var matchPattern = main.filter(itemMatchesPattern(firstPattern));

Or if we wanted to use filter but use our itemMatchesPattern with a different pattern:

var matchPattern = main.filter(itemMatchesPattern(secondPattern));
Our `itemMatchesPattern` function can be said to be ‘pure’, meaning it takes input and returns output without any ‘side effects’ (in that it isn’t amending anything else around it).


The map() method creates a new array which is the result of mapping a function onto each element on the existing array. Let’s see that with an example:

var mapped = {
    return item.toUpperCase();

If we log ‘mapped’, which is also being applied to our original main array, we get this:


You may be wondering how this differs from forEach that we looked at first. The key thing is that forEach is executing on the original array, so may inadvertently effect it. Map on the other hand is creating a new array which is the result of a function being run against each element in the original array.


The last array method I looked at was reduce(). This is considered as a custom array method due to its flexibility. I’m going to explain a very simple example. So simple in fact that it could be done by chaining the other methods but humour me, OK?

Now, at your age you should know that E’s are bad for you. So I want to create a new array that only includes numbers from main that don’t contain the substring ‘e’.

var reduced = main.reduce(function(reducedArray, item) { // 1.
    if (item.toString().indexOf("e") === -1) {
        reducedArray.push(item); // 2.
    return reducedArray; // 3.
}, []); // 4.

Right, this takes a bit of wrapping your head around. I’ve marked the code with numbered references.

  • 1 is where you pass in to the function the arguments that reduce accepts.
  • 2 is where we are pushing any elements that match the criteria of the if statement
  • 3 is where we are returning the result of the final invocation of this method (the sum total of elements we push into the new array in our example)
  • 4 is where you define what the starting point of your reduction will be. I know, WHAAAATTT?

The last part of that function, where we write [] took some time for me to understand. Here’s my best shot at explaining it:

The first argument we pass to the function that reduce accepts is the value of the previous invocation of the function. In our case, we are making a reference to reducedArray which we are defining as an empty array at the end of the function (notice the [] before the closing bracket). So, when the function is first called reducedArray is just an empty array ([]). Then each time it is invoked by reduce() we are adding to that existing array (hence the array gets (potentially) populated each time). You can stick whatever you want into that new array each pass until it is returned on the final pass.

The second argument reduce() accepts is the item it’s currently ‘working on’. However, reduce() can also accept the current index (think of this as the i of your for loop) as a third argument and the original array as the fourth (in our case main). This is obviously handy if you want to do anything to the main array at the same time.

So, the result of logging reduced is:

[ 'two', 'four', 'six' ]

Not an E in site.


This is a brief overview of some of the Array methods popular in functional programming. For a more authoritative explanation, ensure you check out Mattias Petter Johansson on YouTube. I also found a good intro to Functional JavaScript from Anjana Vakil, here:–5obm1G_FY.

As ever, I found MDN to be the ‘Daddy’ when it came to documentation, although I’ll be honest and say that I often struggle conceptually when trying to understand docs of this nature:

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